What’s better than a night out with a good girlfriend? How about a night-in a slow cooked pork shoulder, bottle of wine, and a weekend of guaranteed adventure?

Hiking up to Superior

We must be getting older, at the ripe-old age of 24, Mikaela and I bailed on our “epic” dance party by 12:30. After sharing a cider and ordering two drinks we headed home and instead relished our girl talk sitting in my driveway, an epic thunderstorm repeatedly slashing and illuminating the Wasatch. We spent at least an hour getting ready; trying on outfits, hollering at our hotness, yet came home to quietly slip into oversized sweats, scrub off our make-up, and tuck ourselves in barely two hours later. What’s the point of me telling you all of this? Because it’s the journey that matters! Hell, dancing would of been sweet, seriously. I love dancing, I don’t do it enough, but getting all gussied up, drinking a margarita at home, and laughing at just how ridiculous and girly we are being is just as much fun as getting down all night long. It’s these in-between moments that make girlfriends wonderful.

Mikaela and I met in the third grade when her family moved from Littleton to Crested Butte. I was not popular by any means. I was chubby, wore glasses, read books, and yet was strangely outgoing for the kid that nobody else in my grade wanted to be friends with. Now, I’m not saying I didn’t have friends, because I did. I just didn’t seem to connect with anybody in my grade. I vaguely remember Mikaela politely turning me down when I asked her if she wanted to be in my club (no idea what this club was) and thinking, jeez even the new kid has caught on.

I don’t really remember the exact moment Mikaela and I actually became friends, it’s lost in that awkward time period that is middle school. Where girls are just plain mean and it’s a battle of alliances at the lunch table every day. Mikaela was pretty, fun, smart, and about half the boys like her (which is what matters in 7th grade). I wasn’t really chubby anymore, but hitting puberty before just about any of the other girls made me well, bigger than them. I excelled at sports and got good grades and socialized well with the girls, but the boys? I was definitely still the awkward one. But somehow, through middle school cat fights, Backstreet Boys, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mikaela and I made it into high school as good friends. And by the end of high school? Let’s just say our English teacher nicknamed us Romy and Michelle and leave it at that.

Spice Girls? Salt N Pepa? Rocky Horror Picture Show?

Last weekend Romy and Michelle had a little Utah party, without the catfights, Backstreet Boys, high school breakups (well… mostly) or crazy late nights. But every bit as fun. We ate (although I’m sure nobody doubted that), we laughed, we cried a little, we watched chick flicks, and we played outside. It was the perfect combination of relaxing, playing, and chatting. It’s a funny thing when you have a friend as old as Mikaela. You can talk endlessly about the past, about the people you knew, the jokes you laughed at, the boys you loved; you can talk about today, the boys you love (always with the boys), the places you are, you’re immediate frustrations; and you talk about tomorrow. Where will you be next year, and after that? What about marriage, and kids, and jeez, LIFE? All of a sudden, you felt a whole lot closer to your wedding day when you pinky promised each other to be the other’s maid-of-honor than you do now, 7 years later. Those memories of heart-ache that shook you’re world in high school make you giggle with a moment of sad remembrance now, while “things” in life like marriage and kids were taken for granted then seem huge and ominous and over whelming now (well duh, don’t eff that one up!). But what’s important is that you talk, and you giggle and you cry, but you get it. You get enough about each other and where you’ve been, to appreciate where you’re going.

And that is what makes crock pots, girlfriends, and pork shoulder better than a night out. You don’t need to get ridiculous to have a good time, because if you’re good enough girlfriends, the ridiculousness just seems to follow you.